Can You Tell If These Funny Words Are Real or Made Up?
Updated: Apr. 05, 2023All of these words sound pretty silly, but only some of them are genuine, honest-to-goodness components of the English language. Can you figure out which ones?
Real
This is a real word! “Pronk” is a verb that describes a form of leaping, traditionally by four-legged animals, with an arched back and using all four legs. It comes from an Afrikaans word meaning to show off or to strut. Check out the surprising origins of some more common words, too.
Real
“Bumfuzzle” is a real word! It’s a verb that means to confuse or fluster—similar to the equally funny, but better-known, “bamboozle.”
Real
“Taradiddle” is not, in fact, taradiddle! That’s because this word means nonsense or bogus.
Made up
Bill Bouldin of the Del Rio News-Herald actually invented this one as a joke-word, a pun of “epiphany” and “not.” In a perfect world, this “word” would mean an idea that the person who came up with it thinks is brilliant, or even an epiphany, when it is, in fact, not. Check out the full list of funny made up words we wish were real.
Real
Yes, “cabotage” is a real word—but, unfortunately, it has nothing to do with sabotaging cabbage (or taxis). Instead, “cabotage” describes trade or transport along a coast or within domestic airspace. Just like “cabotage,” these 10 words don’t mean what they look like.
Made up
This one’s another Del Rio News-Herald humor original. If it were real, Reader’s Digest wishes “pregret” would describe the knowledge that you’re going to regret something before you even do it.
Real
“Dongle” has a much more sophisticated meaning than you might think. It refers to a device you can plug into a computer to allow certain software to run.
Made up
Foupe, there it is! This is a fake word—but it did actually show up in a dictionary at one point! In 1755, back when people wrote long S’s, which looked like F’s, a dictionary editor misread “soupe” as “foupe” and mistakenly put the latter in the dictionary. (“Soupe,” in case you’re wondering, is an old-timey synonym for “swoop.”) And that’s far from the only time fake words have ended up in the dictionary—here are 8 more.
Real
Incredibly, “friendlily” is the adverb form of “friendly”! As in: “‘It’s so great to see you!’ he said friendlily.” Here are some more funny words that sound fake, but are totally real.
Made up
Did we get you again with Bill Bouldin’s made up “joke words”? “Unlighten” isn’t a word, but if it was, we wish it was a facetious opposite of “enlighten”—to learn a piece of knowledge so ridiculous or useless that it actually seems to lessen your intelligence.
Real
“Batholith” might sound like a less intimidating relative of Harry Potter’s basilisk monster, but it’s actually a geological term. It describes a large quantity of igneous rock that’s crystallized below the earth’s surface.
Real
“Absquatulate” doesn’t mean doing squats in an attempt to improve your abs—but it is real! It means to flee or abruptly leave.
Real
This may be an old, all-but-extinct word, but it is real. In Old English, “to take yeme” meant to care, so someone who was “yemeles” was totally reckless or careless. It’s definitely one of the old words we should start using again before they disappear.
Real
Nope, “firkin” is not a dirty word, nor is it a catlike creature that can swallow things ten times its size. It’s a British word that refers to a small tub or vessel and definitely qualifies as one of the international words that sound rude in English.
Real
“Impignorate” actually means to pawn or mortgage something! Now that your vocabulary is so much beefier, put it to the test with this middle school vocab test that most adults can’t pass.
